Murder at Catfish Corner: A Maggie Morgan Mystery

by Michelle Goff

  “It’s just,” Edie scratched the back of her neck, “you’ve found out that the obstacle that prevented you and Seth from being together no longer exists.”

  “Who says it no longer exists? Seth wanted to adopt when he was with Jamie. I didn’t ask him, but he probably still wants children.”

  Edie held her hands in front of her and let the tips of her fingers touch. “I’ll give you that, but, honey, you have to admit that Seth was the love of your life.”

  “Where is this coming from? I thought you liked Luke.”

  “I adore Luke, but this isn’t about him. It’s about you and what and who you want.” Edie brought her hands together and cracked her knuckles. “Oh, I can’t do this any longer. Maggie, I’ve been keeping something from you for months. Promise me you won’t be mad at me if I tell you what it is?”

  “I probably won’t be mad. I’m never mad at you, but I can’t say for sure until I hear what you have to say.”

  “You remember back when Kevin Mullins was first arrested for murder and I suggested you visit Seth?” Maggie nodded and Edie continued. “I knew he and Jamie had split up. That’s why I pushed you to talk to him.”

  “How did you know he was divorced?”

  “Somebody at the bank told me. She knew Seth and I were friends and wanted me to fix them up. Seth is quite the catch. I saw him the other day. He’s still a cutie and I’m glad he lost that weight he gained during the divorce and when his mom was sick. He was looking a little paunchy.”

  “You knew about the divorce and didn’t tell me? Since when can you refrain from gossiping?” Maggie asked.

  “I didn’t know how you would feel. I know I usually come across as pushy, but I think I drew from a place of cautious compassion in regards to this matter. I wanted you to come to the decision on your own.”

  “If you wanted us back together, why did you set me up with Luke?”

  “A girl has to have options. And I never said I wanted you and Seth to get back together. I want you to be happy. Honestly, when you didn’t report sparks flying after you met with Seth to talk about Kevin, I figured what you two had was gone. I never dreamed he hadn’t mentioned the divorce and that you hadn’t noticed his missing wedding band.”

  “I don’t go around looking at people’s hands,” Maggie said.

  “Why not? How are you supposed to judge their manicures and jewelry if you don’t look at their hands? Anyway, it never came up in conversation and I felt like a fool that day at the Dinner Bucket when you asked about Jamie. You know what else I felt that day?”

  “No. What?”

  “Sad for Seth because it was obvious that he’s still got it for you.”

  Maggie returned the pillow to her chest. “You imagined things.”

  “No, I didn’t. Ben saw it, too. In fact, he mentioned it first. And you know how bad men are at picking up on things like that. How bad they are at picking up on anything not involving sports or food. So, if Ben noticed it, I’m sure Luke did, too.”

  Maggie replayed every conversation between her and Seth since that day last fall when she had stopped by the police station to gauge his opinion on the evidence against Kevin. Sure, she thought to herself, he had made her feel uncomfortable a few times, but only because of their history and his attitude, which she felt frequently bordered on insulting.

  “I’m not doing this,” she said to herself. “I’ve got to quit thinking about this.”

  In order to find a diversion, she picked up Hazel’s laptop. Before she opened it, she cleared a small stack of papers off the computer and placed them on her coffee table. As she moved the paper, a stray receipt floated onto the floor. Maggie grunted and lifted it off the floor, reading it in the process. When she finished reading the list of items Hazel had purchased on the day before her death, she continued holding the receipt in her hand. Finally, she sighed and said to Barnaby, “Looks like I’m going back to Sassafras.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Maggie had nurtured a soft spot for the Sassafras community since her early days as a reporter at the Sentinel. Until that point in her life, she had been to Sassafras, which was considered remote even by eastern Kentucky standards, only a couple times with her dad. So, when she received an assignment to interview a Sassafras woman on the occasion of the lady’s one hundredth birthday, she had to ask for directions to the area. During subsequent visits to the community, she had grown to appreciate the long drive, which allowed her to clear her mind, and Sassafras’ landscapes, which featured long stretches of flat land, a premium in the hilly region. She also had earned the gratitude of Sassafras’ citizens. They lavished praise and thanks on her for what, in her opinion, amounted to little more than her doing her job. Once, when she tried to explain this to an especially grateful denizen, she had received as a reply, “It’s like the rest of the county forgot about us, so it’s nice to show them every now and again that we’re still here.”

  To her, Sassafras represented an underdog and she took pleasure in highlighting the community’s positive aspects. But in the weeks she had been looking into Hazel Baker’s death, she had developed a growing dislike for Sassafras. She invariably found herself on the two-lane highway that led into Sassafras behind an old pickup that sputtered along at a snail’s pace and discharged a breathtaking odor that smelled to Maggie like a mixture of motor oil and rotten eggs.

  When she pulled off the road and into the parking lot of Catfish Corner, she intended to take a moment to breathe non-toxic fumes and compose herself. She didn’t get the chance. Before she had managed to cut the ignition to her car, Earl David Osborne popped out of his office and headed toward her.

  “Hey,” he said as he approached the car. “You just can’t stay away from here, can you?”

  “I guess you could say that.” Maggie exited the car and closed her door. “I brought some tomatoes to your uncle.”

  Earl David took a long draw off his cigarette. “What did you bring me?”

  “Nothing, but I did want to talk to you.”

  “I’m opening soon, but I can always make time for a pretty face. Why don’t we step into my office?”

  Even if he hadn’t been flirting with her, Maggie had no intention of disappearing inside his office, not in light of the reason for her visit. “How about we stay out here? This shouldn’t take long.” He shrugged and Maggie said. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that first day I came here with Stella. Do you remember that? She and I visited your office.”

  “Yeah, I remember. What about it?”

  “Well, I remember seeing boxes of bleach in your office. There was a hand cart, too. At the time, it didn’t seem odd, but I found this. It was in Hazel’s house.” Maggie produced a copy of a receipt from her purse and looked around in the hopes that a neighbor was sitting on a porch or mowing grass. Unfortunately, all she saw was a stray cat lurking about Boone Osborne’s garden. Although she couldn’t deny the apprehension that had caused her mouth to dry, she moved closer to Earl David and said, “As you can see, it’s a receipt dated for the day before her body was found floating in your pay lake. She bought a box cutter, a hand cart, and six boxes of bleach.”

  Earl David studied the receipt, threw his cigarette on the ground, and immediately lit another one. “So?”

  “So, Stella said there was one half-empty bottle of bleach at Hazel’s house and she has no idea why her sister would buy that much bleach, not to mention a hand cart and a box cutter on the same day. We know what happened to the box cutter. It ended up in the water. And that hand cart and all that bleach ended up in your office. The question is – how?”

  Earl David blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and squinted his eyes. “It’s awful big of a little girl like you to come over here and talk to me like that.”

  Maggie swallowed a few times in a vain attempt to manufacture moisture in her mouth. “I’m not a little girl and, in case you’re wondering, I shared my suspicions with Stella. She suggested we go to the police –
”

  “The police?”

  “Yes, the police.” Of course, that wasn’t the entire truth. She had informed Stella who conceded that Hazel’s purchases seemed suspicious, but Stella refused to allow so much as a ray of light to block the tunnel vision that illuminated one suspect and one suspect only – Earnest.

  Earl David flicked another cigarette to the ground, but he didn’t light a replacement. Instead, he leaned against Maggie’s car. “If I tell you what happened, can we keep it between us? Will you promise me you won’t go to the police?”

  “You know I can’t make that promise.”

  He nodded, bit his lip, and said, “I was afraid of that. Aw, I guess I need to tell somebody. I didn’t hurt her. She was in the water when I found her.”

  “You? I thought Boone found her? I thought you were at your son’s?”

  “Uncle Boone did find her, but so did I. And I was at my son’s, but he and that girl he’s seeing stayed up all night partying. I told him I had to get up early and drive back home and then work all day, but you can’t talk to some people. We ended up getting in to it and I drove back that night.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t remember the precise time, but I know it had to be after one when I left. That’s when I got up for good and that’s when we had it out. I felt awful bad about it later and called him to patch things up, but he acted like I done something wrong. I’m a working man. I just wanted a night’s rest. Is that too much to ask for? I’ve worked like a dog my whole life to give him and now his little girl anything they want and he gets up on his rear end cause I ask him to turn down the music? I thought I raised him better than that.”

  Maggie didn’t acknowledge Earl David’s paternal rant. “So,” she said, “let’s say you left at two. It takes, what, three hours to drive from Lexington to Sassafras?”

  “About that. It wasn’t light when I got here.”

  “Wait. You came here? Why didn’t you go to your house?”

  He nodded his head toward his office. “I have a couch in there. I thought I’d get a few hours of sleep before getting up and cleaning this place up. I don’t know what made me notice her out there. But I did and I went over there and saw her. She was already gone. I pulled out my cell phone to call 9-1-1, but something stopped me. I looked around and saw that bleach and that cart and I knew they’d try to send me up for it.”

  Maggie’s mind whirled in confusion. “Why?”

  Earl David lit a cigarette and stared at his lake. “I didn’t tell you and Miss Martin the truth.”

  “About what?”

  “Me and Hazel. There was no getting along with that woman. I can understand that she didn’t like the lake, but she wouldn’t leave me alone. She was all the time complaining about something or another. If it wasn’t that they was throwing trash on her property then they was using the bathroom on it. A week before she died, she marched over here with her fists clenched and told me that some of those ruffians, that’s the word she used, ruffians. I didn’t even know what it meant. I had to ask her. And she said these ruffians had been throwing balls over the fence into her yard. Why, that didn’t even make no sense. I don’t let my customers roughhouse and play games. They come to fish. Those balls come from her neighbors on the other side. They have a couple youngsters. I tried to tell her that and even offered to pick up the balls, but there’s no talking to some people. So, that morning, I knowed they’d blame me. They’d see that bleach and figure out what I already had, that she come to pour it into the lake to try to kill the fish.”

  Maggie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Would that have worked?”

  He shrugged. “If you put enough of it in there, it might. I don’t know. I just stock them and sell them. I don’t try to poison them. But as soon as I saw that bleach, I knowed what would happen if I called the police. They’d figure I had caught her trying to destroy my fish and killed her for it.”

  “Did you? Is that what happened? Did you kill her?”

  Earl David’s eyes met Maggie’s. “No, I did not. I did not hurt her. I didn’t do the right thing, though. I shouldn’t have left her in that water. That wasn’t the Christian thing to do. My mommy and my uncle Boone wouldn’t be proud of me if they knowed that. It was wrong and I’ve had bad dreams ever since that night. I know it sounds cold, but she was already gone when I got here and I couldn’t do nothing for her. I had to think of myself and my business. And now I have to live with that. I can’t be here at night and I see her when I close my eyes when I lay down to go to sleep. I guess you could say she’s haunting me. Not like a ghost or nothing. Just that vision of her. It haunts me.”

  “I understand.” Maggie tried to make sense of what Earl David had told her. “So, you took the bleach and hand cart to your office and then what?”

  “I went home for a couple hours. I didn’t sleep none, though. I waited a while and come back. I didn’t plan on Uncle Boone finding her, but he did and the police was here when I got back. They ruled it an accident and I thought that was that.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Once again, he met Maggie’s eyes. “Please don’t go to the police. I did wrong, but ain’t my guilt punishment enough? Even if they don’t lay a charge on me, if this gets out, people will think bad of me.” He paused long enough to take a drag from his cigarette before adding, “Maybe that’s what I deserve.”

  Maggie told him she would discuss the matter with Stella. She also warned him that her parents and boyfriend knew she had planned to visit Catfish Corner that morning.

  “So, if anything happens to me …”

  “Ain’t nothing going to happen to you, not by my hand. I ain’t never hurt nobody in my life. I was raised better than that, but I’d like to know what you’re going to do about this.”

  “I’m going to take these tomatoes to your uncle and think about it.”

  Boone insisted Maggie try a piece of rhubarb pie a lady from church had made for him. They sat on his porch swing and shared the dessert while discussing bluegrass music and the danger of canning in the signs of the secrets.

  “Daddy calls the secrets the unmentionables,” Maggie said.

  “That’s what my brother, Earl David’s daddy, called them.” Boone set his saucer on the porch swing and took a sip of coffee. “Did I see you over at Earl David’s place?”

  Maggie nodded. “I stopped by to ask him about Hazel Baker. Boone, did you have trouble getting along with her?”

  “No, I did not, but I hear tell she gave Earl David a hard time. She was good to me, though. She even picked up my mail for me. Every day around three, she would get in that car of her’s and drive down the road to the post office. Then, she’d stop by here and leave my mail.”

  Maggie finished chewing the pie as fast as she could and asked, “Did you say she went to the post office every day at three o’clock?”

  “I did, I did. It saved me a trip every day. I thought that was kindly neighborly of her.”

  “It was,” Maggie said, but she was thinking that Earnest’s last encounter with Hazel occurred at the post office.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I can’t wait until Saturday morning.” Maggie sat with her back to the step railing of Luke’s townhouse’s porch and watched Luke play fetch with his golden retriever. “I need a break.”

  Luke smiled. “Is your case getting you down, Detective Morgan?”

  Maggie eyed him. “Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice?”

  “I’d say it’s more than a note.” Luke held the ball in his hands and narrowed his eyes as if he were contemplating a philosophical theory. “What’s the word for more than one note?”

  “I have no idea. I got a B in chorus.”

  “How’s that even possible?”

  “You’ve heard me sing.”

  Luke grinned. “In that case, I’m surprised it wasn’t a C.”

  “Hey, why are you being so mean to me?”

 
“I’m sorry.” He quit playing with the dog and joined Maggie on the steps. “I guess I’m excited about our trip. Just you and me on a semi-cross-country trip to the Grand Canyon.”

  “Edie thinks we’re crazy for driving.”

  “Well, I think Edie’s –”

  “High maintenance? Spoiled? A little snooty?”

  “I was going to say Ben’s wife and your best friend.”

  “Sure you were.” Maggie put her feet in Ben’s lap. “I think it will be fun to drive. My family didn’t take vacations when I was growing up. We couldn’t leave the garden or the livestock, so I still have so many places I need to see.”

  Luke rubbed her bare feet. “I’m glad we’re going to see them together. Of course, it would be better if you’d agree to ride a mule into the canyon. But I guess you’re not as much of a country girl as I thought.”

  “We had a donkey when I was little. It was a very bad-tempered animal and I will not ride one again for love or money.” Maggie noticed the dog sitting on the sidewalk, wagging its tail, and focusing on the ball in Luke’s hand. “He’s acting impatient and disappointed. You should resume your game.”

  “He’s fine. Aren’t you, buddy?” Luke asked the dog. “What has gotten you so stressed out?” he asked Maggie. “Is it this Hazel Baker investigation?”

  “It is proving problematic and confusing.” Maggie held her hand out to the dog, who responded by allowing Maggie to pet his thick fur. “I don’t know if I have one more trip to Sassafras in me.”

  “You know, you can walk away from it. It’s not your job or your responsibility.”

  “Yes, it is. Once I agreed to help Stella, it became my responsibility.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She did actually. She wanted to tell him about her conversations with Earl David and Boone Osborne. She didn’t want to worry him, though, and she knew he would not react too favorably to Earl David confessing that he had left Hazel’s body in the lake. Earl David had seemed repentant to Maggie. On the walk over to Boone’s, she had glanced back at him and she thought he had looked like he was going to cry. But he had also begged her not to go to the police, which made her wonder if he had more to hide.